Sea Change

Sea Change is an ongoing series of annual portraits following the development of 12 girls, photographed over the course of 8 years. Each girl is pictured holding a lobster, a symbol of her community of St. George, New Brunswick, in eastern Canada where the lobster industry plays a central role.

Inspired by the iconic "Big Catch" images of fishermen and the 26-foot tidal landscape of the Bay of Fundy, I applied this heroic approach to my portraiture, capturing the phases of each girl’s development with beauty, gravitas and sometimes humor.

The images reveal how each girl's identity and gender evolve over time. Just as lobsters endure periods of vulnerability as they molt and regrow their hard shells, the girls in "Sea Change" undergo their own transformations. In this series I aim to document their stages of development and their evolving attitudes - illustrating the dramatic transition from girlhood to adolescence and adulthood.

Clicking on each image below leads to the series of each individual girl’s portraits, over the years.